Ex-OC sheriff acquitted of corruption conspiracy

GILLIAN FLACCUS, The Associated Press

A jury stunned a courtroom Friday by acquitting former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona of a sweeping corruption conspiracy and all but one related count of witness tampering in a case that alleged extensive bribery in exchange for the power of his office.

Carona, 53, began shaking as the verdicts were being read in U.S. District Court, then put his head down on the counsel table and sobbed loudly.

In the gallery, his wife, Deborah, and friends gasped. "Oh my God!" blurted his wife, who along with her husband's ex-mistress faces related charges.

The jury rejected the heart of a case that federal prosecutors spent five years assembling: The conspiracy charge alone alleged 64 overt criminal acts. Although the statute of limitations expired on most of those acts, the jury only had to find one of the remaining acts true for a conspiracy conviction.

If convicted of all counts, he could have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he faces up to 20 years, but is likely to get only two or three, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Julian. The defense said probation was possible.

"If you all don't believe in miracles, if you don't believe in God, what you just witnessed was an absolute miracle and God is watching over me," Carona said later. "Based on what you heard in this trial, some of the salacious stuff, there's a lot of things I need to apologize for in my life. I've made some mistakes along the way. The good news is God forgives people and apparently I'm one of the people he forgave."

Several jurors said they believed Carona was involved but could not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt because they considered the government's chief witness untrustworthy. They also wanted to hear from another witness who was said to be the conduit for payments to the sheriff but was not called by the government.

"In my mind there's no doubt that he did what he did, but we have to go by what the law said," juror Jim Ybarra said. "They were obviously in some kind of cahoots and everybody felt that."

Defense attorney Jeff Rawitz said he will appeal the witness tampering conviction and has filed a motion asking the judge to dismiss the entire case on grounds of egregious grand jury conduct.

The jury found Carona not guilty of one count of conspiracy, three counts of mail fraud and one count of witness tampering. He was convicted of a second count of witness tampering.

The judge said Carona, who served from January 1999 until early last year, could be released on bond, with restrictions against travel.

Prosecutor Julian said he was disappointed at the outcome but was pleased by jurors' comments.

"What I heard from the jurors was they thought the charged conduct had occurred but the indictment was brought too late and they had to follow the law, and we'll respect that," he said.

The case went to the jury on Jan. 8 after a 10-week trial peppered with the suggestion of scandal: infidelity and betrayal, clandestine money drops, government informants and hours of profanity-laced secret recordings.

Carona, once dubbed "America's sheriff" by CNN's Larry King for helping put away a child murderer, was indicted in October 2007 after a long federal probe. He retired as the head of the nation's fifth-largest sheriff's department three months later.

The government charged that as early as 1998, the charismatic three-term lawman solicited the help of multimillionaire businessman Don Haidl to launder at least $30,000 in campaign contributions.

The witness tampering count of which Carona was convicted involved a secretly recorded conversation in which Carona attempted to persuade Haidl to match their stories in front of the grand jury.

Once elected, Carona rewarded Haidl with the post of assistant sheriff, prosecutors said. Haidl received a car, a gun, a badge, a "get-out-of-jail-free" card, and control over a new reserve deputy program that allowed him to hand out law enforcement badges to his friends, relatives and associates, the government said.

Haidl continued to bribe Carona once in office by paying him $1,000 a month, paying for luxurious trips and tailored suits, lending Carona his yacht and private jet and bailing out Carona's mistress and her foundering law firm with a questionable bridge loan, the government said.

The prosecution contended that Haidl's gifts to Carona exceeded $430,000 over several years.

Haidl eventually became a government informant, along with another former assistant sheriff and Carona's one-time campaign manager, George Jaramillo. Both men were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the grand jury indictment against Carona and reached plea deals with federal prosecutors early on.

Haidl wore a wire to three meetings with Carona in summer 2007, producing hours of profanity-laced audio tapes that were repeatedly played for the jury at trial. Haidl himself spent 10 days on the witness stand, one of a parade of nearly five dozen witnesses to testify in the case. Jaramillo did not testify.

Ybarra, the juror, said putting Jaramillo on the stand would have convinced him of Carona's guilt because Haidl testified he funneled all payments to Carona through Jaramillo.

"It would have made a huge difference," he said.

Ybarra said the jury was frustrated that the statute of limitations left only five acts to consider for a conspiracy. Three other acts fingered other members of the alleged conspiracy.

"If they had issued that indictment in June that would have brought in about 30 other overt acts and we could have been able to find him guilty," said Ybarra, 54, a teacher from Garden Grove.

Juror Jerome Bell said all of Haidl's testimony "was a lie to me," and he found the tapes to be "redundant."

"Do I think he (Carona) was part of a lot of this stuff? Yes. But did the government prove it? No," said Bell, 42, a truck driver from Anaheim.

Carona's former mistress, Debra Hoffman, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and bankruptcy fraud. His wife is charged with a single count of conspiracy.

The women are facing trial together, but Julian said the government was reviewing what to do with the two remaining defendants.